Amazon's On-Demand Video Good, Not Great: Mossberg

Amazon Prime customers can now access 7K shows, 2K movies

(NEWSER) - Netflix and Hulu beware: Amazon has struck a new blow in the battle for streaming content. A deal with NBCUniversal has added some 1,000 movies and TV shows to the web giant’s streaming library. Alongside a deal with CBS, Amazon now provides its Prime customers—who pay $79 a year for free shipping and other perks—with 7,000 TV shows and 2,000 movies, Mashable reports. Meanwhile, Netflix faces a setback as customers quit over its new pricing plan . More»

Movies, TV shows will stream directly computer, no huge download required

(NEWSER) - Amazon entered the streaming video tangle today with Amazon Video on Demand, a service that resembles Netflix and Hulu far more than the company’s Unbox service, Ars Technica notes. While Unbox functioned on a principle similar to the iTunes Store, Amazon Video will stream movies and TV shows directly to customers' computers (and, later, TVs), cutting long download times. More»

Both Battleground and Lilyhammer get mixed reviews, as streaming services branch out

(NEWSER) - Online streaming sites Hulu and Netflix both launched original series this week, as both services take baby steps toward competing with regular television, reports Gigaom . A look at each:

• Hulu's Battleground is the more conventional of the two, a 13-episode comedy about a Senate campaign in Wisconsin that started today, with a new 22-minute episode airing each Tuesday. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has solid praise for Battleground, saying it is "a smart, well-written comedy series you might find on a premium cable network." The AP is less kind, however, calling it "a light, watered-down knockoff of The Office," while the New York Daily News comes down somewhere in-between.

Retailers and cable providers going after its online streaming business

(NEWSER) - Netflix is taking over Hollywood. What started as a DVD-by-mail rental service 10 years ago has become an all-you-can-watch, instant-stream entertainment cornucopia, providing more than 20 million subscribers with more than 20,000 movie and TV titles, all at the push of a button. DVD sales are slackening. Less TV is being watched. Studios are losing money. But retailers like Amazon and Wal-Mart are hoping to break up a Netflix nation, reports the Los Angeles Times . More»

Service to rival Netflix will be up and running within weeks

(NEWSER) - Amazon plans to open the sluices for pay-per-view video streaming within weeks, Reuters reports. The Internet retail giant already rents videos for download via the Web but is enhancing its digital media service to better compete with rivals like Apple and Netflix. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos told a conference yesterday the service will be "a new version of video on demand." More»